In Mexico to plant the seeds of "Joy of moving"

Quality projects based on the educational value of movement are at the core of the Mission to Mexico, where the Village Joy of moving team worked with local associations to plant the seeds for a long term cooperation based on the Joy of moving.

For a whole week, between October 9th and 16th, three Village+Sport instructors worked with colleagues, teachers, children and adults in Mexico City and San José Iturbide, where one of our locations stands. Two very different scenarios that share the will to do something significant to educate young people to a healthy lifestyle and to offer all the instruments to grow, learn, and develop a community spirit through games and movement.

"We have organised activities in many countries to promote the Joy of moving", says Davide Tibaldi, technical coordinator at the Village Joy of moving, who acted as an expert of the method during the mission. "But with the visit to Mexico we are looking further ahead, not only in geography, but in our time frame. We have found here extremely favourable conditions to kick off long term, high value projects capable of planting their roots in the territory and help it grow".

In Mexico City, during the first part of the trip, the Village Joy of moving team worked to train teachers of the "Kinder Generación en movimiento", a Social Responsibility project that promotes active lifestyles within families. The project aims for learning and development, but also family integration, because the operators on the project work with adults, as well as with their children.

This similarity with projects over here was a truly pleasant surprise, and allowed us to think we can cooperate very well with the Mexican reality. "Proposing dates for the entire family, and asking parents to play to provide an example to their children, is a strategy that we totally endorse and that we apply in the Village Joy of moving", says Davide, "It was emotional to see how in the last day of training we found over twenty seniors in their gym outfits, ready to play and move with us".

This unity of method and intent pushes us to accelerate our work of continuous training and exchange of skills, with specific encounters once a month and, if possible, by exchanging hospitality in the future. The strategy was launched at Expo Milano 2015, where our Mexican colleagues first discovered the Joy of moving method, and has now found its first practical application.

Different, but no less important, were the activities at San José Iturbide, where the first part of a project to teach motor activities in kindergartens and primary schools has been launched. The instructors of the Village Joy of moving team met with four physical education teachers and eight volunteers, to explain the foundations of the Joy of moving method and share some of the movement games on the field, games that can then be proposed to children: this is a smaller less articulated reality, but still extremely receptive and ready to invest time and energy to move children. The ground is fertile and the "Joy of moving" seeds have been planted, now our greatest challenge begins: nurturing the seeds, and making them grow.